http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26734289
The woman who lost a dog and gained 200 sloths
Monique Pool first fell in love with sloths when she took in an orphan from a rescue centre. Since then many sloths have spent time in her home on their way back to the forest - but even she found it hard to cope when she had to rescue 200 at once.
It all began in 2005 when Pool lost her dog, a mongrel called Sciolo, and called the Suriname Animal Protection Society to see if they'd found it. They hadn't, but they told her about Loesje (or Lucia), a baby three-toed sloth they didn't know how to look after. Pool offered to take it - and was instantly smitten. "They're very special animals to look at," she says. "They always have a smile on their face and seem so tranquil and peaceful."
Sloths are gentle creatures, but are far from easy to keep. Their diet presents enormous problems, and the local zoo had shied away from the task.
Pool sought advice from Judy Arroyo at the famous sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica, who told her she must feed Loesje goat's milk - cow's milk would be fatal. But goat's milk is rarely available in Suriname and had to be sent over from the US. The leaves that sloths eat are also hard to source - and must be fresh.
Loesje had a surprise in store - she turned out to be a "he". Male three-toed sloths display a characteristic spot on their backs when they're a year old. "But we carried on calling him Loesje because he was used to the name," says Pool. He was her very first charge but died after two years. "I didn't know what was wrong with him," she says. She wished she could just ask him. The experience taught her how little expertise there was in the rehabilitation and care of three-toed sloths, but she built up a network of contacts and hasn't had a youngster die on her since.
Soon Pool became the go-to woman for sloths in Suriname. If the police, the zoo or the Animal Protection Society hear about a sloth, they call her. On average, one or two sloths a week pass through her home before being released a few days later, unless they are hurt and need time to recover.
However in October 2012 Pool was faced with a crisis - "Sloth Armageddon", as she puts it. A piece of forest near the capital, Paramaribo, was being cleared and she was asked to remove 14 sloths.
"I'd never seen more than six together, so we knew we'd have a lot to cope with," says Pool. As a machine operator carefully pushed over the 15m (50ft) trees, the sloths in the canopy would fall to the ground, where they were picked up by Pool and her volunteers. Sloths move very slowly on the ground - even when they'd like to get away fast.
A friend built enclosures in Pool's back garden for the adults. "There were so many of them it was hard to open the cage and keep them all in," she says. "As soon as they saw the doors open they'd try and get out." At night, males would sometimes fight and have to be separated. "Normally sloths are solitary animals," Pool says. "So to be so packed together was not a normal situation for them." And they keep to different timetables - two-toed sloths are awake at night and three-toed sloths by day - so they had to be housed separately.
Four days into the rescue they realised they were dealing with more than 14 sloths - a lot more. "After a month we were close to 100, and at the end we got to 200," says Pool. "On some days I had 50 animals at my house. We had 17 babies at one point, being fed with droppers by volunteers." Pool had managed to source a steady supply of powdered goat's milk by then.
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The woman who lost a dog and gained 200 sloths
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The woman who lost a dog and gained 200 sloths
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